The Geek Feminist Revolution, page 15
The idea was actually brought to my attention by the writer herself in a DM conversation that someone was looking to draw a connection between the two of them, and when she admitted to knowing about the Requires Hate review of God’s War, I felt a clench of sadness, because the sort of writer she pretended to be online was not the sort of person who would know about that review.
But Requires Hate would. Because Requires Hate had written it.
The manipulation was masterful. I often wonder if Requires Hate has a day job, because let me tell you, it all sounds super exhausting to me.
On the internet, no one knows who you really are. You can be anyone you want to be. Some of us are better at pulling that off than others.
In my heart of hearts, I’d hoped it would all go away. God knows people like Harlan Ellison have been saying the dumbest, most abusive and hateful shit for years and no one seems to fucking care, even when they assault another writer onstage. But for some reason folks were really, really upset that a woman who ranted angrily on the internet for the entertainment value of a few hundred people was going to be successful by pure virtue of how great her writing was.
Somehow duping everyone into thinking they were some nice person was a hateful crime against humanity, as if we all haven’t been pretending to be somebody else on the internet ever since there was a fucking internet.
Doxxing—the revealing of someone’s personal information on the internet—to me always screams of punishment. It screams of anger. Of fighting hate with hate. Burning someone down to make yourself feel better. It’s someone screaming angrily that if they can’t be happy, no one can be happy. It’s screaming like a shrieking toddler, because somebody who said their cookies were shit is now making great cookies.
It’s them sounding like a fucking bitter jerk.
Life is a game. Some people are masters at it. Life, succeeding at life, is about manipulation, about being the best, about connections and networking. Any rich white dude will tell you that with pride. Many of the writers we uphold as being absolute paragons of the field are screaming racist misogynists who’ve done far worse than write an angry review on the internet or tell people in an email what they really think of their book. They are people who’ve physically abused and assaulted women in the field for years, pinched asses, raped women, told women writers in person that they weren’t worth the shit on their shoe, and we buy their work. We praise their work. We put it on reading lists and say, “Yes, Lovecraft is indeed a racist, but he’s a product of his time!” and make awards in their likenesses.
We make excuses for men. We make room for men.
You should keep being Tiptree. You aren’t the same if you’re Sheldon. Sheldon is just an old woman from Virginia. We can burn Sheldon down and erase her.
In truth, many writers are assholes. They aren’t people you want to go to tea with. I don’t like people, generally. I find them exhausting. I don’t want to be friends with Harlan Ellison or Larry Correia or Orson Scott Card. Nick Mamatas has been one of the genre’s biggest fucking trolls for ten years, and nobody blacklisted him or sent around a petition, and when he’s got his asshole meter turned down, he too can be terribly entertaining on the internet.
But they are dudes, and that’s expected. It’s their place to be assholes. To be shit-stirrers. We make excuses for them, and their behavior.
We are assholes for doing it. But we do it.
* * *
There is a lot of hate in the world. A lot of righteous anger. We spew a lot of words at people, saying stuff like, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” We get angry for feeling hurt, for feeling duped, when the best way to respond when someone plays a masterful game is, quite simply, this:
“Well played. You’re a remarkable writer. I wish you the greatest success in your career.”
We say that shit because we are fucking adults. Because the writing is good. We’re not here to be friends. I don’t like a lot of writers. But when their writing is not bullshit, I still read it, quite often. The persona may be a lie. All of them may be a lie. Shit, the work may even be a lie! But we are not in love with pixels on the internet; we are not in love with the ideas of people and their petty fucking feuds and scrambling attention-grabbing. We are in love with the work.
Boycott whatever you please. Get angry at me for duping you, you four writers I interviewed back when I was Adam, but if you are going to blacklist people for being duplicitous, or for giving their opinion on the internet, or emailing you their opinion when asked, then you better blacklist me too.
Our actions have consequences. I’m all for consequences, and I support you saying, “Fuck that, I’m never reading that asshole again, not letting them join my club, and cutting off all contact.” Perfectly fair and healthy, desirable, even! But going beyond that, reaching for the pitchforks and torches to destroy somebody? Maybe consider why it is you’re ready to burn someone alive. Is it because they put a knife to your throat, or because you’re angry and hurt that they said something true? Are you angry because you were duped? Because they’re talented? Because they played a good game? Do you just want to burn it all down in hate, in retaliation, like a fucking asshole in turn?
The abyss, my friends. Don’t stare too long in it. You get to choose the person you want to be, so you better choose wisely.
Because let me tell you this, to achieve what you want—the blacklisting, banning, burning, the destruction of another human being’s success, transforming yourself into everything you despise—requires very little.
It requires only that you hate.
* * *
Postscript: See Notes for further context.
Let It Go: On Responding (or Not) to Online Criticism
People love to point me to bad reviews of my work on the internet. I suspect this is the same compulsion that gets people to say such extraordinarily bizarre things as, “This smells gross. Smell this!”
We all love a good meltdown. Shared experiences—whether outrage or the huffing of some reeking odor—bring us together. The more I try to keep my distance from online rage, the more I find people reaching out at me to poke the bear. Whether it’s tagging me on various social sites when they share a review of my work, or fans sending me the link directly, the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly responses to my work are sure to find me, no matter how big a hole I dig to stay out of it.
I have learned when to read and respond, and when not to click, and when to walk away when a mob comes at me. In truth, there’s very little said about me on the internet that I’m not aware of, even if I choose not to click a link for the full rundown, or read the comments. If I’ve said something in error, I apologize and strive to do better. If the apology is not accepted, I must move on, because there are some mobs that will never be sated. Knowing when to apologize and when you’re being deliberately misread is a real skill, and something you learn with practice.
The truth is that online meltdowns (as opposed to apologies and moving on) in response to criticism always end badly. PR professional Justine Sacco, herself summarily fired for posting a racist tweet, took over a year to rebuild her career.1 Author John Green was skewered for responding to a post from someone on Tumblr who called him “creepy” because he writes books about and for teen girls. Sacco has explained in subsequent interviews that the tweet was meant to be ironic. Green has committed to spending less time on Tumblr.2 More spectacularly, Anne Rice had it out with readers in the comments section of Amazon, and went so far as to sign a petition to stop people from “bullying” authors via reviews.3
I’ve had people say all sorts of things about me online, many of which amuse me:
1. I’m a professional lesbian boxer (I wish).
2. I hate women/men.
3. I write feminist science fiction because it’s “trendy.”
4. I’m not a real feminist/I’m a straw feminist.
5. I’m an abuser.
6. I defend abusers.
7. I gaslight people (deny their lived experience).
8. I attack other writers to advance my career (pro tip: if you do this, it’s actually a really bad way to advance one’s career).
9. I don’t actually understand women’s roles in resistance movements (all I did was get a master’s degree in that).
10. I don’t believe internet abuse is real abuse (what?).
And that’s just the clean version of the greatest hits. I told myself early on that mad things like the above weren’t worth engaging with. If I did, I’d get accused of punching down at fans who had a right to say these things about me. And, you know, I agree: people have a right to say what they want about me. That’s something you need to get, as a creator. You’re not going to “win” any of these arguments. You are always seen as the person with the most power. Because these examples are tame in comparison to the author who spent months tracking down a Goodreads reviewer and showed up at her house to confront her, and the author who went to a reviewer’s workplace and hit the reviewer over the head with a wine bottle. Authors still behave far more badly than many of their fans, and they often have the means and social capital to do it—and get paid to write a story about it.
That doesn’t mean I don’t get angry sometimes. My best defense against this stuff, I’ve found, is other fans. If I write very clearly online and state my positions in such a way that they’re difficult to misconstrue, even those who willfully misconstrue them are generally corrected by other people who’ve read the same work.
The best example of this was a post I wrote about a notorious internet troll who came out as also presenting themselves as a new writer in the science fiction and fantasy field under another name (included in this collection as “Becoming What You Hate”).
On the whole, the post was taken well, but there were a couple of people who read it very quickly or who read a sum-up someone else did online putting me into a “defends abusers” camp, and didn’t read the article at all. When the internet draws lines, you have to stand by what you said, and disengage.
I reread the post several times to ensure it said what I wanted it to say. Satisfied with that, I had to admit that there were just going to be some people who insist on misreading a piece.
Over the next few days I watched as folks who had read the piece in-depth argued with those who had not. I stayed out of it. And by staying out of it and letting my words speak for themselves, I received three apologies from people—both online and privately—who had posted initially knee-jerk misreadings of the post.
You have to stay out of it. Here’s why:
Studies have shown that when politicians or celebrities make statements denying something, people are more likely to believe they actually did the thing they’re denying. You can’t actually say, “I deny ever going to Bolivia in September.” People will immediately think, “Why does she need to deny going to Bolivia? What happened in Bolivia? Something must have happened in Bolivia!” Instead, you have to make an entirely new statement, something like, “In September, my family and I had a great time in New York City. We met with my friends Prinisha and Paul and had a fabulous time dining at this really great Colombian place.” You go from denying a story (which becomes the story) to actually creating and sharing a new story that does the job of refuting the first without repeating it and giving it more steam.
This is a PR and communications trick that I’ve found I need to bring to my work as a writer. It’s why when you ask a politician a question, they often don’t answer it. They wax on back to one of their talking points instead. Nixon famously did this with a speech about his dog, Checkers, that served as an effective answer to a question about a mismanagement of his campaign funds. In the media coverage after the speech, Checkers became the story, not the issue of financial improprieties.
What I’ve found is that many people delight in skewering and misreading you because they don’t see you as a real person. You have become The Man. By bringing you down a peg they feel that they can claim a victory over everything you represent. I’ve had haters from all sides—far left, far right, and everywhere in between. You also become a focus for folks who are unhappy, or who feel powerless. You become this symbol of all the reasons they feel powerless and unhappy. Feminists in particular get this a lot from men who are generally but certainly not exclusively young and white. Young white men in the eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old range are often coming to grips with the fact that life isn’t as easy as they were promised. I’ve been there myself. When you realize that life isn’t going to hand you the job you want or the woman you want to fuck, you look around for someone to blame, and feminism becomes an easy target. If only women were subservient objects who stayed at home, there would be more jobs open to young white men and more women with no other option but to have sex with them for sustenance.
I realize that white-man utopia sounds really pleasing to these guys, but it’s basically everyone else’s worst nightmare. It’s not so great for them, either, but they won’t get that for a long time, if ever.
Suffice to say, you won’t convince them of this in an online comments section, either.
This is why there are so many times when politic statements won’t work, either, and the best response is no response.
The game of online hate is rigged against you as a woman and as a creator. I’m not saying this is great. It’s not. It’s shit. But understanding how the game is played can help you survive it. When things go wrong, you need to be able to step back and take the high ground. When I wrote an article for The Atlantic that took on both Gamergate and Sad/Rabid Puppy followers, I had two good days of muting people on Twitter ahead of me. I even had some guy support my Patreon just so he could send me an angry message about how the tweet of his that The Atlantic editors had included in the piece was misconstruing his position. I had people threaten me with legal action for libel. They called me all sorts of boring names. I knew that the worst thing I could possibly do was engage any of them, because if you engage one, the others smell blood.
I muted and muted and muted.
And then they got bored.
And it was over.
Sometimes the mob is just nonsense. You have to know when it’s best to stand by your words and when to ride out the wave.
Your haters are not here for a conversation. They are here to keep you from doing your work.
In teaching a recent copywriting class, I spent an entire class lecture on how online harassment works, and why it’s become a professional hurdle that every woman creator in particular must learn to navigate. For the record: I don’t like that this is the case. But it’s real, and we need to learn how to manage it.
When trolls are confronted about why it is they prey on people online, the most common response is “For the laughs.” Anita Sarkeesian, the creator of the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games YouTube series, analyzed her own rabid trolls and found that many of them played trolling the way they would play a game. Folks got together and played for “points.” Did you get a reply? How many people got angry with you? Did you make them angry enough to block you? Did they run away from their house? Did you get them to cry?
These are all points.
Trolling is a game.
Getting you to leave the internet, cry, talk about how hurt you are, leave your house, or (end goal!) kill yourself is the actual, for-real goal of many online trolls.
Because to them, it’s just a game. It’s a way to pass the time.
My approach to combating online trolling is to understand who it is who trolls. Studies have found that many trolls are pure sadists. They literally get pleasure from upsetting you. When I see someone online who appears to be earnestly arguing a point with me who then says elsewhere that they are delighted with how they’ve gotten me to respond, to “froth” or “get angry” or “annoyed,” I know I have a troll instead of a real conversation, and I disengage. Sadism is about feeling that one has power over someone, especially someone one or others admire, and power is a hell of a drug.
This is why I practically tear my hair out when I see the targets of trolling make big posts about how much trolling hurts them, and how depressed they get, and how it makes them not want to write, and how they cried themselves to sleep, or decided to use the internet less. The truth is that you are not actually doing what you hoped: you aren’t proving your humanity to another human. You are simply telling the sadists that what they’re doing is working. You’re playing the game, now.
A lot of folks get angry when I point this out, that talking about how much trolling hurts is actually playing the troll game. Many argue that we must share the abuse we’re getting online so that folks know it’s real, and know what a heavy burden that women in particular bear by speaking publicly. I’m all about truth-telling and truth-sharing. If you need to put up a hate roundup a couple times a year or run a “death threats received” tally, okay. I get it. But if you’re going to do that you need to understand that a lot of these people live for the hate roundup where you give their comment space on your blog or in a tweet. That’s a point, folks.
That’s the game.
Don’t get me wrong—I’d love to see real consequences for hate speech that’s meant to inspire terror and incite violence. And if we go after hate speech online, we would need to go after hate speech on the radio and on television, too, from big public figures who love to rile up their listeners in the hopes that they’ll burn down the White House or a predominantly black church or become border-running vigilantes who shoot immigrants.
